I had a domain which was coming on the first page of google natural search listings for a keyword for which it was optimized, consistently for over 2 weeks. And recently for the past 4 days, it was showing up in 2nd place in organic listing. But suddenly, it is nowhere to be seen on the first page. It is being showed on the fifth page now! I am totally clueless, It has good number of backlinks, add new content every alternate day. Is it a google slap? What can be the reason for such a major drop in google rankings. But, it's coming in same place as earlier in Yahoo search results(Keeping my fingers crossed on that).
It could be a temporary thing, I have sites that do that all the time, they tend to bounce, then it weeds out the bad sites that jumped in front of me, and im usually back on top. Give it time.
The rankings can jump around a little whilst the site is new. Continue to build links with the target keyword and you should regain your rankings.
without the URL it is almost impossible to say, if you like you can PM it to me and I will have a quick peek.
I am also looking this ranking fluctuation for few of my websites last week, May be something is like Google dance. We need to have patience and building up new links always of you niche will be good.
Thanks a lot everyone, I really appreciate your replies! I l need to be patient and wait for the rankings to go up again...and of course keep building links!
its hard to say why that would happen as there could be several reasons behind this. if you were building backlinks and got to the first page, then if you stoped link building, your site can move down like this. also, if you did a lot of link building at once and stopped or slowed down, u can experience ranking flactuation. could be google slap as well or could be a temporary thing due to the result being pulled from different datacenter.
It is most likely a temporary thing, and it will get back on the first page. Lately Google changed their algorithm, and added a percentage of time a site shows up on the first page. So 1 site can show up for a week, then it goes down (to the 2nd or further page), and another one takes it's place, then after another week the 1st site gets back. I guess they're testing how users like a given site over time, or just give a chance for others to get in the light... The old algo had less variables and showed 1 site on the first page as long as it got more links and content than the others...